Tom Perez, the new DNC chair who was Obama’s labor secretary from 2013 to 2017, ripped into Trump on April 20 over a USA Today report about the deportation of a man who reportedly should have been shielded from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But immigration lawyers who spoke to The Daily Beast said the deportation at issue probably would have played out the same way if Barack Obama were president—and that Democratic political operatives, including Perez, were silent when DACA recipients were deported under his administration.

[Obama] acknowledged that his Administration was, in fact, arresting and deporting these young people and shockingly told a high school honors student facing deportation that if she had a problem with it, she could call her Congressman. This was an opportunity for leadership, not a time to play hot potato.

Matthew L. Kolken is a trial lawyer with experience in all aspects of United States Immigration Law – including deportation defense before Immigration Courts throughout the United States, appellate practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and U.S. Courts of Appeals. He is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) since 1997.